Thursday, July 16, 2009

Breaking non-news

Standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator at my office building this morning, I glanced over to the TV monitor on the lobby wall as I do every day. And, typically CNN has a "breaking news" story. Usually, it's something like an uprising in Uganda, flooding in the midwest, twin engine plane missing in the mountains of Utah, Governors flying to Argentina to bang someone that isn't the Governor's wife, or Tony Romo breaking up with Jessica Simpson... that kind of thing.

Today, CNN's breaking news story is the Michael Jackson video of his hair catching fire.

Holy shit. This is breaking news? A 1989 video of a Pepsi commercial shoot where Jackson's hair catches fire is breaking news? Have we stooped so low as a stumbling, demented, star-stalking nation that a 25 year-old video of a dead person suddenly surfacing is now classified as breaking news?

I suppose the network responsible for putting Nancy Grace on television shouldn't be held to higher standards, but to term this as relevant from a news perspective is simply wrong. This should be left to the TMZ's and E! networks of the world. Not CNN.